British Pop Star Has Hot Mess Meltdown on Morning TV

OK, question to loyal Anglophenia readers: If I’d just downed a sh**load of pills and was slurring like Shane MacGowan on a bender, you wouldn’t let me go on national TV and make a fool of myself, would you? Unfortunately, British D-list celeb Kerry Katona doesn’t have such people in her life, as she was allowed to turn up on ITV’s This Morning and provide the instant TV trainwreck classic seen below. (Reportedly, concerned viewers were calling in asking what was wrong with Katona before the interview was even over; Katona blamed medication she’d taken the night before.):

The Guardian‘s Julia Raeside blames producers for allowing Katona to go on: “Surely when she arrived at the studios, production staff must’ve taken one look at her and seen she was incoherent, slurring, and confused. So what did they do? Inform her management she wasn’t fit for broadcast and send her on her way, or shove a camera in her face for viewers to lap up the grisly spectacle?”

Little Britain star Matt Lucas has gotten a “quickie divorce” from his partner Kevin McGee, and he could have to pay McGee half of the money he made during their six-year relationship.(Daily Mail)

How did I miss this one: Gavin & Stacey star Mathew Horne says he likes women with one “real boob and one fake. I appreciate that, rather selfishly, this would entail a partial mastectomy, but at least then I get the best of both worlds.”(Now Magazine)

The Guardian‘s Will Beckett defends chef Jamie Oliver and his healthy eating crusade for British families. “There’s no doubt he makes money out of it (a telly series and book guarantee that and I’m sure it doesn’t do any harm to his restaurants), but don’t confuse altruism with poverty. There are plenty of people who do well out of doing good, and it seems a particularly British disease to try and knock Jamie down for it.”

Cheryl Cole disses The Spice Girls, saying they pale in comparison to Girls Aloud: “We’ve been around for six years – they were around for 18 months! We recognize what the Spice Girls did, but it really annoys me when you meet girls who go: ‘We wannabe the next Spice Girls’. Yes, they had worldwide domination, but they fell out, bitched about each other and went their separate ways. We’ve been around all this time, fighting to climb each step of the ladder, putting out hearts into everything.”(Telegraph)

Michael Parkinson decries the state of British television: “You’ve always had c–p television. The problem now is it’s regarded as the staple diet of television. That kind of celebrity program, whether it be people dancing, people singing or people, I don’t know, having each other’s husbands and wives – it doesn’t interest me.”(Telegraph)

The Guardian‘s Paul Lester wrote a book on cerebral post-punk band Gang of Four and discovered they were just as petty and juvenile as all those other bands.

Mohamed Al Fayed has been accused of sexually assaulting a girl under the age of 16, a charge he “vehemently denies.”(The Times)

Morrissey will write his autobiography: “So much crap is written about me, it’s hard to live with sometimes,” he said. “It all gets burned down in history and becomes a part of your legacy.”(NME)

Kevin Wicks

Kevin Wicks founded BBCAmerica.com's Anglophenia blog back in 2005 and has been translating British culture for an American audience ever since. While not British himself - he was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri - he once received inordinate hospitality in London for sharing the name of a dead but beloved EastEnders character. His Anglophilia stems from a high school love of Morrissey, whom he calls his "gateway drug" into British culture.

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